Tuesday 12 August 2008

4500th anniversary of the Armenian calendar

The year 2008 marks the 4500th anniversary of the victory of the Armenian Patriarch Hayk against Bel at the battle of Hayots Dzor (south of Lake Van). Movses Khorenatsi (V century) depicted Bel as the head of the evil forces trying to conquer the world: Patriarch Hayk was engaged in peaceful work on the Armenian land, when Bel made an attempt to subjugate him. Hayk killed Bel with his trident (the triple spear) arrow shot from his wide bow in the battle of Hayots Dzor. Hayk’s victory symbolized the victory by the forces of Light over the forces of Darkness.

The struggle against foreign invadors forms the axis of the millenia-long history of Armenia. Hayk’s victory, standing at the very source of that struggle, became a token of future victories. The day of Hayk's victory was marked as the starting point of the Armenian calendar and if calculations are correct, on August 11, 2008 marks the turn of 4500th anniversary of the Armenian calendar.

While the figure of 4500 is much smaller then the 5768th year of the Hebriew calendar, it is certainly much greater than the 1429th year of the Islamic calendar, or the 2008th of Gregorian or Julian calendars. Indeed, we have every reason to be proud.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lovely post.

Thanks for reminding us -- it completely slipped my mind with all this turmoil all around.

I also posted this entry on khosq.com (I'm sure lots of people will find it important and interesting enough to vote it to the front page)

best

Garen

13 August 2008 at 04:56  
Blogger Mediapitek said...

Thanx Garen. I'm still thinking about what to do to this blog - Ditord.blogspot.com - but you've always been the best reader I've had on this :)

I'll turn it into the Citizen's blog - I think.

13 August 2008 at 23:20  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

When I first started blogging, I didn't know much about Armenian blogosphere. But this particular blog caught my attention and was inspirational, because it was trying to explore the concept and practice of Democracy on a more theoretical level, and later apply it to more pragmatic issues faced by such a young state as the 3rd Republic... This was a breath of fresh air when compared to much of the blogs and media ourlets that we see, which chose to speak the language of the status quo, rather than start from a more theoretical/hypothetical and *exploring* approach, and only then placing it in the context of Armenia only as an example or a case study of various issues and problems of "Democracy".

And I think you should try to get this blog back to that modus operandi.

We think that we write the text, but it is the text that is writing us.

15 August 2008 at 00:39  

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